I am pregnant.
Beta was in the mid 200s. At 9dp5dt. You guys, that’s highish. As in, is this twins????? Oh my, oh my.
Some hope, some realistic thinking, some numbness. Lots of peace.
Just when I got used to the idea of BFN.
Blood.
I had some very light spotting earlier in the week but it went away. Now it’s back. More than spotting. I would call it “light flow.”
I’m feeling a little numb, mentally.
The RE nurse says don’t give up hope, plenty of women experience bleeding.
OK, yeah, I know… But it doesn’t feel like just some cervix irritation or whatever.
It’s nighttime now and the bleeding is gone again.
I have one HPT and I’m thinking of taking it tomorrow. I hadn’t planned to, but I think I should. We have houseguests coming, and I think I want to know before they get here tomorrow afternoon.
Beta is on Monday. Three more days.
I still feel pretty peaceful about it all, but the bleeding really put me on edge. Three more days.
Ahhhhh, good morning!
Here’s what I wrote on the plane yesterday…
I’ve been gone too long. Too much to tell you, one blog post is not enough.
I am wishing now that I had posted all along; it’s so nice to have this blog as my own journal and record, even if no one is even reading it. Ah, life, we do our best.
So, last things first:
1. I am currently on an airplane, and PUPO!!!
We decided to go back to our California RE for another fresh cycle, so I just spent the past month enjoying Los Angeles and doing the big TTC.
So allow me to go back a bit…
2. We got to California, just me and my baby girl … Which made me feel like Supermom, lugging around all her gear and getting her onto two flights by myself. DH had a work trip and met us there.
3. We took her to Disneyland! She loves Mickey, and we had an amazing time, just taking it easy and enjoying ourselves. It was crowded, though! Still worth it. 🙂
4. I got to see my two pregnant sisters! It was so wonderful to be able to, because I don’t know if I will make it to their showers or anything. How awesome if we can all be pregnant together?? It was especially sweet to see my one sister who has been in the IF trenches for several years, and finally is well on her way to motherhood after battling PCOS and severe fibroids.
5. My sweet baby girl turned TWO! We had planned a big party at home, but instead, being in California we kept it small and enjoyed the company of close family.
6. All the IVF drugs went pretty well this time around, although by the end I was feeling much less comfortable in the ovary area by the end. Well, not for no reason.
7. Before this IVF I was concerned about making more embryos than we were able to use. Last time we retrieved 11 and 9 went to blast. Dr. B said that I’m three years older now, so he expected me to make fewer eggs this time. Well.
He retrieved NINETEEN eggs, and 13 fertilized, and they ALLLLL went to blast. Dr. B says I’m like a fine wine… Well my eggs are. 
8. So. We transferred two. Dr. B was concerned perhaps my body would not be receptive, based on our first IVF failure, but since we had so many good embryos, thought we should give it a shot and I agreed. He asked me to choose which embryos but I asked him to. He decided on a grade A and grade B, so as to give us a good shot without using up our best ones in possible substandard conditions.
9. I had had a cold over the weekend, and baby girl was battling a strange rash. Well. The evening of the retrieval, I’m hanging out resting my massive ovaries, and my hands start to hurt. One toe starts to hurt, too. It just keeps increasing. I get in an argument with DH because I’m cranky and can’t sleep. The next morning, oh my, there are red spots all over my hands and feet, and they are so painful I can barely walk around or use my phone. OMG you guys, seriously awful.
So I get the call for the fert report, and I have to tell the nurse… Um I think I have hand, foot and mouth disease. But I thought only toddlers get that!? Yeah so says google, who also says it’s not painful. Yeah right.
So off to urgent care, and they were like, yep, coxsackie virus, there’s nothing you can do but wait, do you want anything for the pain? Ummm I will stick with Tylenol, thanks.
So I spent a few days on the couch, quarantined, trying to heal up before the transfer! Thank goodness, I managed to do it. But now…. Everywhere on my hands where I had a red spot, the skin is starting to peel off. Huge, deep chunks. I look like a burn victim. Not great when I am trying to care for a toddler and fly home!! So bizarre and annoying.
10. At least DH is with me for the flight home!! I couldn’t do it without him, especially not with a ten-lb lifting restriction.
11. Now here is today’s news… As I was inserting the Crinone, there was a small streak of blood. What does it mean?? Implantation. Or, cervix irritation. Or, period. So basically nothing. Doesn’t feel like nothing though!
12. What a difference it is to do IVF this time around. My feelings are more complex and conflicted about getting pregnant, yet I have an intense and deep sense of peace about it all, no matter what the outcome.
I can’t believe we are done and now PUPO… Surprisingly I have no desire to POAS. Intrigued to see what the next chapter for us will be!
My baby girl has been sick and teething for the past couple weeks. This means worse sleep than usual, and a tired mama. We have an appointment today to see if her ear infection went away, because it wasn’t severe and we decided to see how it played out. Wish me luck with that…
We have been talking about doing another fresh IVF cycle. We do have money for exactly one more. Don’t even ask me how we would pay for an FET!!
Here’s the thing: We decided to go back to my awesome RE in California because his prices are almost 3 grand cheaper than our RE here in Alabama. I told my Alabama RE why we made this decision, and he was supportive, offering to do our monitoring or whatever we needed. So gracious. He was concerned we might go to a clinic with low success rates, and he even brought up the SART site and looked up California RE. He was stunned to find rates of 78, 63, and 71! He said those numbers are fantastic, and if that’s what we decide is best for us, he is supportive. Love him!
But… later that evening I got a call and it was him. He had a meeting with his partner RE and they wanted to offer a match of my California RE’s prices. WOW!
So that makes our decision more difficult. Money is taken mostly out of the equation…
1. Stay in Alabama
–Do IVF from home, no travel!
–A clinic we do like, although we have that lingering bad feeling because our embryos did not survive there.
–Respectable success rates, in the 50s.
–Would we always wonder if we could have had success in CA?
2. Go to California
–Travel. Montoring is more hassle, and it will cost more money to be away from home.
–Staying at my parent’s house, so that is free at least.
–Use up most of our air miles to get there and back.
–Amazing success rates.
–We have had success there once before.
–We get to hang out in CA! I miss it so much.
You guys can probably tell where I am leaning. We haven’t made a decision yet, but we need to soon! I am HOPING my period starts soon, so we can get this cycle going!
After we found out our embryos didn’t make it, I felt done with the whole TTC and family building quest. Happy with our one, ready to move on. There was still some pain and a wish that our daughter could have a sibling, but that was it. I wanted to leave it all behind and see what else life has in store for us. I was just tired of the fight. I even started mentally going through all our baby stuff and how I would give away and sell it all.
It was heavy on my mind. I wanted to make the decision for good, and be done with it. My DH was 60/40 about it. Then he was 40/60. Much less sure one way or the other. We kept thinking and talking.
A couple days ago, DH took baby E with him to get an oil change, so I was alone for a few hours. I thought about the money we saved while I was still working, before E came along. Money labeled, “baby savings.” We promised ourselves we wouldn’t touch it for anything else, and we haven’t. We used that fund for one failed IVF, one cancelled FET, one successful FET, and now this last cancelled FET. We felt that God provided for us so mercifully. We know that He doesn’t always work in that way, and we in no way deserved it. And we still have some left. Enough for one fresh cycle, I estimate.
But money isn’t so freely flowing these days. I am a SAHM now, and we are squeaking by on one income. It’s not poverty or anything, just not a lot extra for fun and saving. So that money could really allow us some breathing room.
But as I considered all this while the house was quiet, I felt in my heart such gratitude for the fund we had, and remembered how we had dedicated it to building our family. I in no way feel like using it for that is an obligation, or that it would be a sin not to, but my heart began to warm to the thought of taking that fund and continuing the work that it began.
One of the reasons I was not open to another IVF was the devastation I would feel if it failed. Now, having made peace with possibly being done, I think I would be ok. Well, ok enough. I could handle it.
Another concern is the thought of making ten more embryos is overwhelming. I don’t have a desire for a bunch more kids, and we don’t have the money for many FETs, so creating an obligation to a bunch of embryos is not what I want. (This is just how we feel about IVF, for us, that we will use every embryo we create.)
So I am looking into doing one last IVF. Maybe in August! I am thinking to ask for limited fertilization, perhaps four eggs, and freeze the other eggs. Hopefully out of those four we could get at least one good embryo, and if we needed to in the future, we could use those other eggs. But I would have no problem discarding the eggs if we felt done.
Thus the adventure continues….
A friend posted pics of her friend’s adorable triplets. Truly adorable. Knowing the journey that may have led their parents to them, I am so happy for them. But there is a piece of me that aches, seeing their triple joy in stark contrast to my current feeling of loss. And my child’s very possibly only-childhood.
Will I ever be able to just be happy for people?
Will my heart get over it? Does it ever scar over and make me stronger, not more fragile?
How do I even say this?
On Thursday we arrived at the clinic, properly hormonal as instructed. We were finishing up paperwork in the office and the embryology assistant came in and said they have bad news. Our embryos did not survive the thaw.
SIGH.
Four embryos. Gone.
So many conflicting and complicated feelings. I can’t even muster the energy to write about it yet. There was such a feeling of potential, knowing our embryos were frozen and waiting for us to try again.
Now, it’s either fresh IVF again, or adopt. I’m feeling too drained, too done, to consider either.
We have one extraordinary child. She is our joy. We are happy. I am feeling ready to move on and take my life back from infertility.
Good afternoon Jane,
Just wanted to let you know that I rec’d your embryos today and they are already in my LN2 storage tanks.
Have a great weekend and if you have any questions, let me know.
Embies are here and safe! Tears in my eyes…
Infertile Follies 
